Poisonous Discoveries
by Ready-made Prodigy
Summary: Watson learns something about his friendship with Holmes and it isn't that he really shouldn't drink anything in proximity to Gladstone's water bowl. humour, fluff, drama, nonslash


Title: Poisonous Discoveries  
Rating: G  
Characters: Holmes, Watson  
Disclaimer: Still. Not. Mine.  
Warnings: Fluff. Fluffy fluff. Fluffily fluffed fluffy stuff.  
Word Count: 1,000+  
Summary: Watson learns something about his friendship with Holmes and it _isn't_ that he really shouldn't drink anything in proximity to Gladstone's water bowl.  
A/N: This idea just zinged into my mind with such ridiculous force and precision, i'm beginning to suspect a whole 'nother separate entity may have access to my brain. Please enjoy this armful of cuddly love.

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Watson practically stumbled into the sitting room, thoroughly exhausted. He had just returned from an impromptu surgery on Fleet Street where a carriage had overturned, causing its driver to be hurled into a nearby tobacconist's window. Watson had been buying tobacco, so there lays the connecting strand of this narrative. Or perhaps that he was a doctor, at all. Either way, fate dealt a fairly generous hand to the unsuspecting and very fortunate cab driver.

As much as Watson wanted water to clean the blood off his clothes and skin, he would much rather have some to drink first, so he wandered over to their modest dining table where a silver water pitcher had been left beside Gladstone's water bowl and a note from Holmes saying he had been summoned to Pall Mall for a violent assault to a valet who served a very illustrious government official. Despite his fatigue, Watson managed to glare at the barely even filled water bowl and then the note. No doubt Holmes had instantly ceased to care about another living being where there was a more interesting dead one to attend to. Honestly, that man had no business being a pet owner.

Watson resolved to right it as soon as he himself had a drink. He poured himself a generous amount of water, which he swigged down like a pint of frothy beer, automatically setting the empty glass on the small side table beside the settee before he realized he couldn't possibly lie down on it with the mass of gore still covering his clothing. He stood longingly in front of the deliciously inviting furniture, swaying slightly.

He was so tired. There had been glass everywhere. And blood. It had taken Watson hours to remove it all.

Without warning, Watson's legs gave out beneath him until he was sitting on the floor and then falling to his side. His body felt numb, so it was without much discomfort when he landed on his long injured shoulder. Something was wrong, he knew, but it was much nicer to just close his eyes and rest.

~*~

He woke up cradled in warmth and he wondered vaguely if he had somehow made it to the settee. Mrs. Hudson would be very angry, he knew. He felt heavy and he couldn't move an inch, except that he was moving, shaking in fact.

Why was he…?

"Please."

Please, what?

"Not this."

Not _what_?

"Please, give him back."

Watson could feel a pair of lips press briefly into his hair. He vaguely remembered such an action being preformed by his brother, a very long time ago. It was followed by a thready breath, a quietly bitter sort of chuckle that ruffled a few of his brown locks.

"Of course not. I don't deserve it. I've never deserved you, Watson, but—" Holmes choked. "I am lost without my Boswell."

The warmth surrounding him suddenly became tighter and he was suddenly aware there were arms around him. Eight? No, two, just two, around his shoulders and his waist and despite the muscles that pulled him closer it was still…soft.

Something of his mind was coming back to him and he dimly registered that the wetness on his cheeks were tears, but when he raised his hand to confirm it, it wasn't his own face he gently laid his fingers against.

He was promptly dropped onto the floor, his head smacking dully against the thinly carpeted wood flooring. The shock of the pain was enough for Watson to gain control of his senses enough to open his eyes in time to see Holmes scuttle backwards until his hand scrabbled over Watson's sword cane, which he then raised above his head, eyes gleaming with immediate violent intent.

Immediate things like, "I am not a reanimated corpse!" and "I drank one of your experiments meant for Gladstone, you stupid fathead. Don't you dare strike me with my own cane!" came to mind, but he knew a still better way for Holmes to desist his action.

"Norbury."

It was something only between a croak and a whisper, but Holmes heard it nonetheless and keen eyes instantly darted from the relatively clean floor, to the empty glass on the side table, to the water pitcher displaced from the position he had left it and at last to Watson himself. Holmes dropped the cane and tentatively crawled forward to check the pulse beneath his chin, having to press a little harder to find its slow and mellowed beat.

The relief that flooded his face was spectacular to behold, not in the magnitude of the expression itself, but the softness of the emotion in it, which for Sherlock Holmes, had always ever been sharp. It was one of simple affection, like when you walk out to find the sun shining and you're glad to have been alive to experience it.

Mind still dulled with whatever drugs he had ingested, Watson wondered why Holmes would have that expression, seeing as Watson was the one who 'died'. Though maybe…maybe it was the same thing.

"I'm sorry about that, dear fellow. Here, let me fetch you something."

He disappeared out of Watson's range of vision, carrying back with him a glass of white liquid. He set it on the floor, knelt, and once again Watson was being pulled against Holmes' chest and the glass being raised to his lips.

"It's just milk, Watson. Drink."

Watson obeyed and managed to turn his head just far enough so that his cheek dropped onto his friend's shoulder. He could feel Holmes shift a little behind him so that his legs were stretched out beside Watson's.

"The milk should counteract the main component of the paralytic. It should wear off within the hour."

Watson's first action upon regaining all of his faculties would inevitably have been to laugh heartily over the whole affair, but in the end, he could not bring himself to do so. Not when Holmes had held him for that entire hour and several minutes afterward.

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_**A/N:** Big thanks to PGF and KCS, who were my strongest supporters of this story. Hope you all enjoyed this little offering of fic._


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